Winners and Finalists 2018

I am proud to present the winners of the UK Business Awards 2018. The day consisted of the live entry presentations in the morning followed by the superb gala lunch and highly anticipated awards ceremony. Congratulations to all our finalists and winners.

See you again next year!

Neil Skehel, CEO Awards International

Operational Excellence
GOLD WINNER Zoocha

At Zoocha, measuring ourselves by the highest standards of quality and excellence has always been a fundamental value. As we compete on a global stage with intense competition from larger organisations, we needed to be able to benchmark ourselves against ever tougher definitions of quality. To this end, we embarked on a programme of operational excellence, ultimately achieving accreditation for ISO 9001, the international standard for quality management.

Our vision is to provide a market leading customer experience in an increasingly competitive market. Over the past 18 months we have developed a clear Customer First strategy; delivering innovative, customer centric solutions to improve the experience we can give to our customers. We've created and launched first in market robotics, our first customer app and digital service capability and developed our operating model to enable our people to take full ownership of our customer experience.

We have number of innovative partnerships with technology firms. We work alongside these We have number of innovative partnerships with technology firms. We work alongside these partners to provide our clients with cutting-edge, market-leading technology start-ups that empower people. We're not kidding when we say that some of this technology is life-changing. It allows our clients to use their skills at work in an elevated way and helps them to see the future of tech the same way we do: technology empowering people to do better.

When fire engulfed the Grenfell Tower, GLL’s Kensington Leisure Centre became temporary home to the emergency services’ incident response and command control. After they left, GLL’s local Management Team set about shoring up the shattered community by returning the centre to its role as the ‘beating heart of the local community’. Offering exercise and therapies to local people, GLL made a demonstrable improvement to the health and wellbeing of one of the poorest postcodes in London, measured in social value.

Absolute were approached to relaunch personalised gifting website, GiftPup.com. We were the first UK agency to integrate Magento with DirectSmile, which provides customers with photo-realistic personalised preview images of gifts, whilst generating print-ready artwork for suppliers. GiftPup also now benefits from a work-flow from customer to supplier that’s ‘untouched’ by human hands. GiftPup saw transactions rise by 193% with increased revenues of 220%. Organic traffic to the website also saw a huge 285% increase.

Through the Customer Relations Transformation Project, CrossCountry's Head of Customer Relations, Emma Donnelly, has delivered a broad range of innovative developments that have transformed the complaint handling function, including manpower management systems, integration of systems and processes and enhancement of communications channels. In this way, she has driven significant developments to the customer experience, including an 86% reduction in average response times for complaints and a 97% reduction in average response times for delay claims.

Divido is a retail finance platform that allows companies to offer instant customer finance. This drives conversion at every stage of the purchasing funnel; attracting new customers, increasing sales and raising average order values. Through one integration, Divido connects multiple competing lenders, delivering high accept rates and low fees. The platform is also omni-channel, available online, in-store and via mobile, and works across multiple countries.

When fire engulfed the Grenfell Tower, GLL’s Kensington Leisure Centre became temporary home to the emergency services’ incident response and command control. After they left, GLL’s local Management Team set about shoring up the shattered community by returning the centre to its role as the ‘beating heart of the local community’. Offering exercise and therapies to local people, GLL made a demonstrable improvement to the health and wellbeing of one of the poorest postcodes in London, measured in social value.

As part of their vision to be the “No. 1 Bank for customer service, trust and advocacy”, RBS partnered with SaaS technology provider Vizolution to transform their telephony mortgage journeys by solving key customer pain points, making journeys more efficient and eliminating paper. Branded ‘DigiDocs’, the project generated a 26-point NPS improvement, customer adoption rates of 98%, and meant the Bank became the first in the UK to offer a totally paperless mortgage journey.

The Royal Bank Entrepreneur accelerator gives entrepreneurs the power to start, scale and succeed. We have 12 hubs across the UK and our programmes have been tailored to empower entrepreneurs at any stage. We provide entrepreneurs with unique coaching, environments and networks and focusing on the key driver to success - the entrepreneur – we offer insight, support and challenge to help entrepreneurs take their business further and faster.

The Low Carb Program is a 10-week completely automated, structured health intervention personalised for adults with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes and obesity. The intervention launched in 2015 and has significantly disrupted the understanding behind type 2 diabetes and acceptance of type 2 diabetes remission. Over 341,520 people have joined the program which is innovating digital health interventions and the way that patient engagement is understood. More importantly, it has demonstrated it has positive health impacts on an individual and large scale.

VHR is an international technical recruitment organisation providing solutions to the Aerospace & Aviation, F1 & Automotive, Engineering & Defence and Marine industries across 45 countries. Created in 2003 by Danny Brooks, an experienced recruiter, VHR delivers a partner-orientated recruitment approach that truly understands our clients' business, essentially acting as act as an extension their Human Resources department. We are passionate about the industries where we operate, the career-enhancing support we provide and our people.

In the PR and communications sector, business success is built on deploying highly skilled teams who are able to consistently deliver creative, commercial results for clients, week after week. Our UKBA entry focuses on how we are doing that through our commitment to ‘growing our own’ talent: finding, and most importantly developing, the very best young people. We see our team as the next generation of leaders in our industry.

AfB launched its initiative in 2017, which focused on employee wellbeing. Over £40,000 was invested in training programmes to promote positive mental health, with the ethos that happy employees provide better customer service. AfB now boast an impressive 93% employee engagement score, 90% staff retention rate and a 4.7* Glassdoor rating. 4/5* Trustpilot reviews indicate customer satisfaction is at an all-time high and AfB has maintained its market share whilst growing its dual service accounts.

Business Change or Transformation
GOLD WINNER Business Stream in partnership with Capgemini

The English market opening in 2017 created significant opportunities for Business Stream to support more large multi-site customers. We wanted to vastly improve their joining experience to ensure we were creating long term relationships. Working in partnership with Capgemini we transformed our on-boarding process and delivered an innovative, first in market AI solution using Robot Process Automation (RPA) which helped us exceed customer expectations and reduce cost to serve.

Three UK's goal is to be the most loved brand in the UK. We exceptional customer experience using our people's strength and innovative solutions that have propelled us to become leaders in webchat . As strategic business partners, we created a webchat operation that was lean, quick and delivered cost benefits while keeping customers at the heart of what we do. Customer experience soared from 59 points in Q1 2017 to 71+ in Q2 2018

Enterpreneur of the year
GOLD WINNER Rated Climb Online (Make More Noise)

Since securing The Apprentice title in 2014, Mark Wright has become the most successful winner to date, with the development of multi-million-pound digital marketing agency, Climb Online. A true Entrepreneur, Wright has established himself as one of the UK’s most engaging public speakers, where he regularly delivers talks on his journey to success and the latest digital marketing trends. With clear plans to position Climb Online as a global brand, whilst developing other business interests, Wright boasts an exciting future where he is destined to make a difference to the lives of others

Continual innovation is key for the business and in 2017, Fourpure embarked on a Â£2.5m investment to develop and expand its business to meet growing demand and place itself at the forefront of technological advancement within the UK beer industry. The business is now spread across five warehouses in Bermondsey. The expansion has allowed the brewer to double the footprint of its production area and tap room, as well as increasing capacity by 400%.

Finalists Fourpure Vizolution in partnership with RBS Lloyds Bank International Net World Sports

OVERALL WINNER

WINNER Three UK & Tech Mahindra Business Services

Three UK's goal is to be the most loved brand in the UK. We exceptional customer experience using our people's strength and innovative solutions that have propelled us to become leaders in webchat . As strategic business partners, we created a webchat operation that was lean, quick and delivered cost benefits while keeping customers at the heart of what we do. Customer experience soared from 59 points in Q1 2017 to 71+ in Q2 2018